Paris Apartments

Friday, 19 December 2008

To me eyes, the nicest street decorations in Paris this year are on the Rue de Belleville around the Jourdain Metro station. This could have become a subject for a post in itself, about why there is this microcosm of bourgeois Paris in the middle of one of the most working class districts in the city, but that will surely be for another time! Here it is just for the pleasure of the image and to signal my absence for the next 10 days or so.

When I started this blog in September it was more for my own benefit, to give myself a channel to talk about my surroundings. At first I was throwing my observations to the wind and wondering where they would land. At that time I didn't realise that blogland is actually a community, with an army of invisible people sharing their perspectives on their immediate environments and offering mutual support. My greatest pleasure since starting this blog has been the nuggets of wisdom I've received following my posts, correcting me, offering encouragement and widening my knowledge on subjects. These are not platitudes or disguised requests for visits, but intelligent, informed comments from talented and interesting people. Thank you all for visiting, and I hope to see you all again in the new year!

12 comments:

If you've ever priced an apartment in the trendier sections of the city, you wouldn't need to ask about the "microcosm of bourgeois Paris in the middle of one of the most working class districts". It's a fact of life that sooner or later, the BoBos move in on the downtrodden and push them out of their last affordable refuge.

Hi Starman - I agree with you to some respect, as I live downhill from this area in a district that has seen plenty of BoBos move in (I'm probably just as guilty!)

However, the area around Jourdain is different in that it always seems to have been a 'rich' enclave. The appartment blocks - which date from the same period as those around them - are noticeably more bourgeois. It also still has a selection of the more exclusive and fairly ancient food shops that would have always served this community.

I would have thought that your most visited post would be "The Skin Trade"!...wink, wink...Joyeuses Fêtes, Adam![Just wanted you to know that you have inspired me to write a lot more on Paris as well...witness: www.parigigi.wordpress.comI know, please excuse my shameless self-promotion!!]Looking forward to more of yours in the new year!

Funny...I lived in the jourdain neighborhood for several months this year, including the 2007-8 holidays. I, too, enjoyed the lights very much. I thought, however, that the display at the metro stop was a little "over the top" as opposed to tasteful. So I did not associate the decorations with a bourgeois mindset, but something else...something like a sense of community.

Other evidence of this is the local street fairs which spring up at odd times, and the propensity of shopkeepers on side streets to tie bunches of plastic flowers to the iron posts lining the roads.

And while there are some good specialty shops in the area: bakery, butcher, jewelry, etc., it all seemed more artesian than anything else.

So my (limited) understanding of the neighborhood is that it is self-aware as a community, and has an artistic streak.